


ATLA Beta

by vR (RyuuBloke)



Category: Alienstuck - Fandom, Homestuck, Worth the Candle
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-24
Updated: 2019-06-25
Packaged: 2020-05-19 02:55:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 8,914
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19348084
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RyuuBloke/pseuds/vR
Summary: The beta for ATLA.





	1. Rosemary Roxygen

Rosemary used to be a regular teenage girl. At 18 years old, she was at the cusp of adulthood when she was kidnapped by a mysterious group of scientists. At least, so she assumed. She didn't actually remember anything from before the experiments. Her memory was filled with operations, injections, surgeries. What little she remembered were scenes of her on an operating table or in a doctor's chair, being violated by masked men in lab coats. She hated these men, for torturing her, and for presumably robbing her of her past.

She wanted revenge. And after what felt like an eternity of pain, she would get her chance.

* * *

You wake up. Above you is a concrete ceiling, below you is a concrete floor. You're lying on a shitty bed with a metal frame and an extremely thin but clean mattress.

You get up and look around - to your chagrin, the room is almost completely empty. Featureless concrete walls surround the bed in the corner of a room, an impenetrable metal door, and most importantly, some kind of armor in the middle.

It is a full plate set of armor, so thick that whoever tried to wear it would be unable to move. In fact, if someone _is_ inside, you can't see them through all the metal. So you try asking.

"Hello? I-is anyone in there?"

"A-are you... ARE YOU ROSEMARY ROXYGEN (ロ ズ メ リ ロ ク シ ジュン )?!" A painfully high-pitched chipmunk voice calls out from within the armor.

"Yes? At least, I think so?" 

To be perfectly honest, you don't rightly  _know_ your name. Back in the labs you were Subject 413, and that was enough of a name considering you never encountered any other humans with which to interact, and so had no need for names. Rosemary Roxygen sounds like a solid name, though you lack a reference frame to compare it with others.

"What's your name?"

"My name?! MY NAME IS  _WORTHLESS_   RIGHT NOW! YOU'RE ROSEMARY ROXYGEN!" The voice is loud enough to get on your nerves. 

"Is there anything I can do to help you?" You don't wish to be rude to the (presumably) little creature, so you maintain a demure polite demeanor.

"IF YOU COULD TELL ME ABOUT ONE OF YOUR famous stories... I would be......... honored." The voice quieted down as it mentioned the "famous stories", as if in reveration.

"My famous stories? What do you mean?" You put your hands on your hips and cock your head, looking like the cute moe shoujo that you are.

"DON'T PRETEND YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT I'M TALKING ABOUT! Oh, I'm sorry, please do pretend if that's what you want. BUT I'M TALKING ABOUT YOUR  _QUIRK_ OF COURSE!"

"My... quirk?"

You can hear the creature within the armor breathe in deeply.

"ROSEMARY ROXYGEN, MS413, POSSESSES THE QUIRK OF  **The Shills List** **(シ ル ズ リ ス ツ)**. SHE CAN ACCESS AN INFINITE LIBRARY OF OBSCURE FICTIONAL WORKS, CALLED SHILLS, AND UTILIZE THEM IN VERBAL AND PHYSICAL COMBAT!!"

The creature seems out of breath, even though that wasn't a particularly long statement to recite. You appreciate their efforts, however, because they managed to jog your memory.

During the experiments carried out upon you, many times you would be injected with a strange substance and subsequently subjected to hours of flashing images. Until now, you thought those were some sort of examinations to test your resistance to seizures, but having heard the name of The Shills List, you realize that they were in fact the aforementioned Shills. You have read, watched or listened to countless such stories. Given you weren't forced to consume them for an  _infinite_ amount of time, you presume that their infinite quantity is probably an embellishment by the creature within the armor.

Remembering The Shills Listreminds you of your quandry from just a moment ago. Perhaps by comparing your name to the names from the Shills you will be able to assess its quality.

You look through your memories, but to your dismay, only one Shill comes to mind at the moment: A short-lived webcomic called  _Alienstuck_. You examine your memory of  _Alienstuck_.

 _Alienstuck_  is an offshoot of another, much more popular webcomic you remain frustratingly unable to recall. Its story was cut short long before it could really develop, but from what little was actually released, it appears Alienstuck was attempting to tell an epic story about the conflict between Jesuon and Lucyferune - two members of an alien race known as xenomorphs. You feel like the two characters and their species were also borrowed from elsewhere, but once again, you lack the context to say where from. Not much can be said about  _Alienstuck_ , except for one thing - the story seems to be  **Absolute Garbage**. 

As soon as your inner monologue finishes not saying those words, a wave of newfound awareness floods your mind. Letters start to appear in the bottom right corner of your field of vision, crisp like a tree branch even though that area of your vision is usually reserved for the blurry extremities of sight.

The letters read as follows.

 _Shill Skill Unlocked: **(@.) Worth the Candle: Game Layer -**_ _Much like Juniper, you can now interpret your own abilities through an internal game layer._

The letters are pushed further up your field of vision in a satisfying, floaty animation as another set of letters moves into view.

_Shill Unlocked: **(O) Alienstuck**._

_Shill Skill Unlocked: **(^)**_ **_Alienstuck: Absolute Garbage -_ ** _Alienstuck is so terrible, you can cause a primal disgust response in your opponent simply by talking about it._

The appearance of the letters coincides with a remembrance of a Shill called  _Worth the Candle_. Unlike with  _Alienstuck_ , you find yourself unable to remember most details of the story. You do remember, however, that the protagonist, Juniper, uses a "game layer" to monitor and augment his abilities, which appears to be based on something called "roleplaying games". In the story, the game layer is a useful abstraction that the protagonist is familiar with. You, however, having never played a roleplaying game, or any game for that matter (at least not to your current memory), lack a familiarity with the mechanisms referenced by the game layer. It wouldn't be such a problem if you could remember more details about  _Worth the Candle_ , however, besides the  _existence_ of the game layer and the fact that it displays notifications in front of the protagonist's eyes, you're completely at a loss as to what its functionality could be.

One thing you remember from  _Worth the Candle_ is that blinking dismisses the messages. You do just that.

What you've learned of the game layer so far is that it displays messages informing you of new Shills you've remembered and new "Shill Skills" you've "unlocked". About that. What could a Shill Skill be? You figure that unlocking a skill probably means you have attained some means of using it.

"E-excuse me, Ms. Roxygen, have I done something to offend you?" The squeaky creature snaps you out of the depths of thought.

"Oh! I apologize. I was lost in thought."

You can literally  _hear_ the blood rush to the creature's cheeks within the armor.

"OH OF COURSE! ONE OF THE  _LEGENDARY_ INNER MONOLOGUES OF ROSEMARY ROXYGEN... HOW COULD I BE SO SILLY?!" it exclaims, once again speaking in its irritating voice.

You're still trying to be polite, but if you're being honest, the creature is  _really_ starting to provoke a primal disgust response with that chipmunk voice. It makes you want to use Absolute Garbage on it, just to let it taste what it's like.

Come to think of it, that's actually probably what it wants. The creature said it wants to hear you tell it about one of your stories. 

No, it would be wrong to tell the creature about  _Alienstuck_. It probably wants to hear about a good story.

You open your mouth to try to tell the creature about  _Worth the Candle_ , but realize before you start that you still don't remember anything about it besides the game layer. Given you barely know anything about it yourself, you could hardly explain it to someone else. It seems Lady Fate has decided to force your hand - you will have to tell the creature about  _Alienstuck_. 

You have a feeling not even someone who would read trash like this webfic would want to torture themselves with what's about to come.

"Let me tell you about  _Alienstuck_..." you start reluctantly, still not sure if you want to ruin the creature's day. "It's this webcomic about two xenomorphs called Jesuon and Lucyferune. Lucyferune is born out of a human mother, who is actually a recolor of a character from another webcomic, but I forget the name... Anyway, her name is the Oracle in  _Alienstuck_ , and this is her story. She used to be this guy's girlfriend... Uh, but actually, just to talk about the story in release order, it  _starts_ with an introduction of a bunch of characters. There's Alice the Xenomorph, the two deities: Crizos and Phieza, humans named Joey and Winston... Crizos and Phieza are at war in the beginning, and Phieza creates the reptilians as she dies. Crizos takes over the Earth, and he populates it with these aliens called xenomorphs. Phieza's reptilians are supposed to protect Earth and humanity from the xenomorphs. There's some more guys, like Alisser or Theseus or Allan (the Oracle's boyfriend...), but honestly it would take forever to tell you about them. The comic keeps explaining it's mythology for a couple more pages - it's terrible, really. Then it skips to the present day, and these guys start showing up near Earth? They're called the Knight and the Maid and they're also recolors of characters from another webcomic, but this one the one who's called the Knight doesn't even  _look_ like a knight. There's a guy called the Thief and Lucyferune is also there. There's a big war between the xenomorphs and the reptilians, which the xenomorphs win! The Thief is actually a reptilian but he changes sides and fights with the xenomorphs. His plan is that he will ask the Knight, who's on the xenomorphs' side, to bring his species back after the war is over, but when he actually goes up to him to ask him, the Knight  _kills_ him. This begins a weird section where the Thief travels the afterlife and meets a character who is literally just straight-up stolen from another webcomic, not even a recolor. It turns out Lucyferune died while fighting Allan... Wait, wasn't he on Earth during the war? What the fuck is wrong with this comic's lore? It's been maybe 50 pages and it already can't keep itself straight. Anyway, Lucyferune wakes up in the afterlife, and meets up with his mom, the Oracle. They travel for a while and meet the Thief and that other character, who's actually called the Muse. Some angry grey guy tells them they need to find someone called the Seer, but only after they unscrupulously murder him. They manage to find the Seer eventually, who is again a recolor of a character from a different webcomic, who  _starts_ to send them back to the world of the living, but then the Oracle is stopped to have a little chat with Phieza, who is now renamed to Phoeza, and is also a recolor of a character from another webcomic, but this time a really fancy recolor with some bits added. There's an actual  _dialogue_ _box_ on this page. They talk about some dumb destiny shit and the Oracle finally gets resurrected. THEN there's a big fight back on Earth (since a bunch of people came back to life), and Oracle participates this time, but Lucyferune blasts her with wind which sends her all the way to space. She crashes into a spaceship where she meets Joey and Winston. There's more dialogue. Then for the next few pages there's no images, but luckily the dialogue is under the page in a text box. The Oracle kills Winston because Winston is threatening to kill Joey, and then she drinks his blood, which means she's a vampire. Then it turns out Joey is a  _lesbian_ and in love with a xenomorph called Alice and also pregnant with her child.  It turns out that Alice doesn't love her and was lying to her so that she would carry her child. The Oracle gives her a speech about how it's good that she's gonna die giving birth to this xenomorph because it's gonna be a good xenomorph. Like I said before, the Oracle is also a xenomorph's mother, that's how she originally died, but her son is the evil Lucyferune. So she knows what it's like having to die to give birth to a xenomorph, but she tells Joey that her death is gonna be a good one unlike hers, because her son is good unlike hers. The Oracle explains to Joey how to come back to life once she's dead (you need to find the Seer, remember from before?), and there's a real animated GIF on this page. Then there's a really dumb joke about having the same panel for a couple of pages, but basically Joey dies and Jesuon is born from her womb - Jesuon is also a xenomorph. It turns out Jesuon is actually a huge dick and very vulgar which you wouldn't expect with a name like that. I actually don't know why that is, because I don't know what other character Jesuon is a reference to, but I have a feeling that it's subversive for a guy who's a reference to that guy to be a dick. There's some dialogue, the Oracle finds out her real name isn't Oracle (spoiler the real name is probably Rose (again i don't know why)) There's more dialogue and the Oracle ends up explaining her backstory to Alice and Jesuon. Apparently she used to be some kind of space travelling scientist, but then their ship crashed, and a guy named Allan discovered the xenomorphs, but there was only one shitty larva who needed a human host. Obviously no one wanted to be a host since they knew they would die. But the Oracle was in love with Allan so she agreed to bear the child. Then the Oracle convinced the other crew members to be hosts too and in the end there were 18 hosts in total. Everyone ended up dead except her, and she wanted to take revenge on her boyfriend and kill him and the xenomorphs, but he tied her up and forced her to give birth, which she eventually did, birthing Lucyferune. Then she's dead and the story starts when she's dead so we're back at the beginning. So so far we know how Lucyferune and Jesuon were born - from the Oracle and Joey. Then the author literally shows up in _side_ the comic and starts talking to the audience about how bad it is but he's gonna keep going anyway. We find out this was just Act 1 Act 1 Act 1 of the comic, and then Act 1 Act 1 Act 2 starts. The Muse is a giant face in the sky overlooking the Earth and the Thief is also there, floating in space. Then there's a whole bunch of new characters who are all differently colored xenomorphs and one of them is called Magdalina and she's kiwi green and she's the protagonist now I guess. The xenomorphs all speak in strange colors, and for some reason they have weird "quirks" like replacing every "s" with a 5 or every "l" with an {. The colors they speak in correspond to the color that they  _are_ but since a lot of them are brightly colored, the background of the dialogue box has to be black for their words to be visible, and it looks terrible. Anyway, apparently the Muse is perceived as evil by the xenomorphs, and they want her dead, but they're all still children and therefore aren't t strong enough. Apparently these are a different type of xenomorph than Lucyferune and the other guys from the Oracle's backstory, because they are all kinds of different colors and also aren't as cool at fighting as the other ones. The other new characters besides Magdalina include Gabriello, Levataya, Peetre and Aebell, but none of them matter right now because they jsut leave after a short conversation about how they're shit and can't win with the Muse. Magdalina goes to her computer and stares at some kind of communication software, specifically at the icon of her old friend Deviore, who went offline a while ago and hasn't been in contact since. Then he suddenly shows up again, and they have a short conversation where it turns out he's okay but that he still can't meet any of his friends, and then the comic was never updated again."

"Oh. My. God. Shut. The. Fuck. UP!!!" the creature screams, "I WAS SUPPOSED TO TEST IF YOUR QUIRK WORKS AND YOU PULL THIS BULLSHIT ON ME?! I THINK I'M GONNA ACTUALLY KILL MYSELF IF I HAVE TO LISTEN TO ANOTHER WORD OF THIS GARBAGE STORY. AND BELIEVE ME, IT WOULD BE REALLY USE TO COMMIT SUICIDE IN HERE. I HAVE A TINY SQUISHY BODY AND THIS IS A HARD FULL FUCKING PLATE ARMOR, OKAY? ALL I NEED TO DO IS SLAM MY HEAD AGAINST IT. SO PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD DON'T SAY ANOTHER WORD."

It seems that while the creature is disgusted with  _Alienstuck_ , the wordiness of your explanation has rubbed off on them. It continues threatening to kill itself and begging you to stop even though you've finished talking a long time ago. 

"LOOK, IT'S CLEAR YOUR QUIRK WORKS AS INTENDED," it says eventually. "TAKE THIS KEY, GET OUT THE DOOR AND MAY I  _NEVER_ HAVE THE MISFORTUNE OF SEEING YOU AGAIN."

A small rusted key falls through the helmet's visor down to the floor. You think you can see a small yellow hand for a split second before the floor below the armor opens, swallows it whole, and closes once again. Thankfully, the key remains safely on the floor.

You pick the key up, and walk up to the only door in the room.

You open the door and step through it. Once you're on the other side, the door suddenly shuts behind you. As such, you lose access to the key, though you think it would probably be useless now.

You find yourself in another concrete room. It's the same size as the previous one, but its contents are much different. But that's a story for another day.

Before the chapter ends, the game layer graces you with one more message. This one fills your entire field of vision:

_You have successfully escaped the first room of the Dungeon, and completed the Demo. What further adventures await you in the Dungeon's remaining chambers? Find out in the **full game** , available now for only $720. _

You feel your limbs give out. Your vision slowly fades to black, leaving only the ominous message behind. You can't seem to get rid of it.

 

 

 

 

 


	2. Thor E

Suddenly, a new message appears in the bottom right corner of your vision. It doesn't replace the message about the demo, that one's still doing fine. The new message is even more confusing. It reads:

_Rosemary: Be a new girl._

* * *

You hate the Masquerade (マ ス キュ レイ ヅ). 

You were made by the Masquerade. The fifth child of Odynn Nordik (オ ヂ ヌ ノ ル ヂ ク ). You weren't really his children, but he liked to call you such. Odynn Nordik is a high-ranking player in the Masquerade, and while miserable little experiments like you or your sisters are not  _in_ on the corporate structure of the organization, you recognized that Nordik can do pretty much whatever he wants.

Nordik is deeply in love with Nordic mythology. He would rather his children didn't know this, he would rather not break the masquerade within the Masquerade. But when you managed to get access to Google that  _one_ time and looked up his name, the website asked you if you'd meant to write "Odin nordic". You were quickly caught and dragged away from the computer, but at that point the fiction was already dispelled.

But it's best to start at the beginning.

Odynn Nordik, being the high-ranking member of the Masquerade that he is, was able to start his own project, separate from the larger operation of the Masquerade. You're not entirely sure what the larger operation  _is_ \- again, people like you are not in the know - but you know the girls being worked on there are all called subjects and given numbers. Your little family wasn't like that. You weren't Operation MS, you were Yggdrasil. You didn't have numbers, you had letters. And you weren't just Subject this or that, you were Freya (フ レ ヤ ), Loki (ロ キ), Hel (ヘ ル ).

Each branch of the family tree was named after a different Nordic mythological being. The first child born in a branch is declared an A (pronounced "alpha" like the Greek letter), and from there Nordik mutates and modifies the genetic material of the most recent member of the branch to create the next one. The first is called A (pronounced "eh" like the Canadian exclamation), then B, C, and so on. This process tends to result in a... sinusoidal pattern of success. The first child is a very well made base, presumably grabbed from Operation MS. Then, the quality of each consecutive child tends to decrease. The second and third children are still pretty okay, but by the time of the fourth or fifth child all that mutating Nordik forces your genetic code to do ends up mangling your genetics pretty badly. And then, eventually, a good mutation occurs, and you get another good child. Then it all starts over again. Up and down and up and down the quality of the children goes, and with it does their standing in the family.

Your name is Thor E. The  _sixth_ out of ten Thors currently out there, you were at the end of the first downward genetic spiral. Your younger sister, Thor F, managed to develop the wonderful quirk of summoning lightning from her boobs - a lovely little callback to just one of Thor A's many powers. This lightning is fueled by her own body, which means that so long as you can convince her to keep  _lactating electricity_ and feed her, you have a power generator. And a ridiculously efficient one at that - Thor F can extract a whopping 0.1% of mass energy from anything she eats. Thanks to this, Thor F and Thor G were both taken to Nordik's private mansion, where they supply him with near-free energy.

You, on the other hand, have no quirk. You're no God of Thunder, no Divine Warrior, and you can't even spawn lightning out of your tits. Even Thor D can function as a pretty good extension cord. You are useless. While your sisters trained their quirks, you ran the family shop where they could exchange tokens gathered during excercise for rewards. Rewards which you could never taste.

It's for this very reason that you hate the Masquerade. You hate Odynn Nordik in particular, but he's just a symptom of a larger disease. You want nothing more than to bring doom to the people who brought you into this world just to watch you suffer. 

And now, you may actually have the opportunity to do so.

* * *

You wake up. Above you is a concrete ceiling, below you is a concrete floor. You're lying on a shitty bed with a metal frame and an extremely thin but clean mattress.

You get up and look around - to your chagrin, the room is almost completely empty. Featureless concrete walls surround the bed in the corner of a room, an impenetrable metal door, and most importantly, some kind of armor in the middle.

It is a full plate set of armor, so thick that whoever tried to wear it would be unable to move. In fact, if someone  _is_ inside, you can't see them through all the metal.

 "OH. IT'S YOU. THE GAAARBAGE GIRL," a voice from within the armor speaks. It's a squeaky voice, one that sounds as if someone contracted an audio file to speed it up.

"Who are you calling 'Garbage Girl', you little punk!?" 

"LOOK. WE BOTH KNOW YOUR QUIRK IS NOT WORTH TESTING. BECAUSE YOU DON'T HAVE ONE. SO HERE, JUST TAKE THIS KEY AND LET'S HOPE YOU DIE BEFORE I EVER HAVE TO SEE YOU AGAIN."

A small key falls to the floor through the helmet's visor. Then, the concrete floor opens up and swallows the armor whole along with the entity inside. You are struck with worry for the little guy, and find yourself hoping they'll be okay, even if they called you garbage.

You figure the key is probably meant to open the metal door. You take a minute to examine the room further before leaving though. To be specific, you check under the bed. Lo and behold, you witness a bag of  _cash money_ down there. It's big and heavy, so you expect it to contain a  _lot_ of  _cash money_.

You reach into the bag and, to your surprise, discover it contains a large wooden chest. After a good deal of work, you manage to drag the chest out of the bag, and open it.

The chest contains $20.

Your life has been so full of disappointments up to this point that this honestly does not faze nor surprise you.

You place the money in the bag. You prepare to leave the room. You realize that you might have a use for the chest in the future, so you decide to built a bit of a contraption. After opening the door, you drag the bed you woke up on to block the doorway, so that the door can't be closed fully without moving the bed. Before you finally leave, you take the key out of the door.

Just as you expected, the metal door tries to shut down on its own as you exit the room. Luckily, your doorstopper bed proves adequate in stopping it from doing so.

This isn't the first time you've woken up in a mysterious dungeon. Granted, it has been many years since something like this happened, but old habits die hard. Your father has put you through ordeals such as this many times in the past, and you have learned to see through his tricks. Checking every corner for hidden things, preparing for every contingency, and never assuming anything to be worthless.

You wonder if this dungeon is also your father's doing. He stopped testing you like this a long time ago, once he became certain you had no quirk. What's the point of training a useless daughter, after all? Still, the entity in the armor mentioned testing quirks. Could it be that by some miracle your father's faith in you has been restored?

The second room you find yourself in is another mostly featureless concrete room. This time, however, there is a large mirror right in front of you, covering most of the opposite wall. There's a wooden door in the wall to your right.

You take the opportunity to look yourself over in the mirror. Just to see if all the bits are still in the same place.

 


	3. Thor E looks literally like the female Thor from Marvel Comics

TL;DR: If you want to know what Thor E looks like but you're not up to reading this chapter, she looks like the female Thor in Marvel Comics, but younger and cuter. Fill in the blanks how you see fit.

You look at yourself in the large mirror that covers the entire wall. 

You give yourself a little show by flexing in front of the mirror.  _Damn_ , look at those  _gains_.

You're dressed in a cool mix between a masculine armor and a feminine dress. It's your own style that you like to call  _Knight Couture_. You're wearing a breastplate to protect your breasts and heart. It has a classic "boob chestplate" look in that its adorned with two large domes, meant to imply breasts. The typical issues of such armor, such as comfort or actual protection, are dispelled by the fact your real boobs are  _far, **far**_ less impressive in size than your breastplate would suggest - in fact, you're almost completely flat. 

The breastplate is made of grey matte steel in general, but there are rich reflective gold floral patterns that cover almost its entire surface, save for the boob domes, which are matte. Attached to the breastplate is a series of protective rings that travel up your neck, effectively preventing anyone from slitting your throat. Technically there are small gaps between the rings to allow for motion, but one would need a very precise aim and a very thin blade to successfully attack you.

Your white arms are bare, and quite muscular. While you don't look anything like a bodybuilder, a flex reveals a considerable bulge of the bicep, one that isn't expected of a 5'6" girl like yourself. Traveling down your hairless grab-enabled appendages, one would reach your hands. Though your thin long fingers call back to your divine heritage, years of work at the family shop have made your palms rough and ready to withstand much stress. You've trained yourself to be able to take a lot of heat in through the hands - literally, when you had free time you would lay your hands on pots while heating up water inside it. This has made your hands very resistant to heat, but it also rid them of a smooth feminine texture. Your fingernails are painted blue.

You are also wearing a blue cape. It reaches just below your hips, so as to reference superhero getups without generating the many frustrations of a full-blown cape. It drapes over your shoulders, which themselves are rather flat, though not especially broad. The inside of your cape bears the same golden patterns as the breastplate.

Your hair is long and blonde, and you let it flow freely. It's very well maintained, giving it the look of a true hair waterfall. It's decorated with three accessories: a silver tiara decorated with a sigil depicting a large-horned ram, and two mirror sidepieces in the shape of angelic wings, which are attached to the tiara, but can come off if you desire.

Your face is plainly divine. Such a face would be difficult to describe in such a way as to satisfy every reader, so the narrator asks here that the reader imagine your face as the most beautiful female face in accordance with their own tastes.

The bottom half of your outfit consists of a short blue skirt, once again decorated with a golden floral pattern. Propped up from under, it always maintains a wide-angled conal shape. It reveals your knees and part of your thigs, but remains within the limits of what can be considered appropriate.

Where your breastplate does not protect your torso, the skirt extends upwards, suggesting it may in fact be a full dress partially obscured by the breastplate. This is indeed the case. The dress does not cover everything, however. It exposes your rippling (at least compared to society's standard for women) abs. There's just a hole cut in the middle of your dress to show off your six-pack. You made this modification yourself, and are very proud of it.

Finally, you wear a pair of steel armor boots, which also bear the wing-like sidepieces attached to your tiara. These boots are useless as armor, as no one in combat is ever going to try to stab your foot.

You conclude your little examination by flexing at yourself once more. You take great pleasure in looking at yourself in the mirror. Your mind is rife with insecurities, but in the right outfit, your body looks great. Especially those abs. Girl. It took a lot of work to make them look like that and you're not gonna let  _anyone_ tell you they're not hot as fuck just because you're a girl.

Man, fuck your dad. 

You head to the wooden door. This one isn't locked and opens smoothly. You walk through to the next room.

 


	4. Lesbian porn

You step out of the mirror room and find yourself in a large hallway that extends to the right and left of you. There is a metal door right in front of you, but you're not so silly as to go through, not considering what happened the last time you went through a metal door. 

You can't see either end of the hallway, as it curves at both ends. You take a bit of a walk, both to the left and right, and conclude from the constant slope the hallway seems to maintain that it's likely circular - or at the very least it takes on the shape of a fragment of a circle. Doors line the inner wall of the (presumed) circle, all metal. You even try to open a couple of them, and they all seem to open quite easily. Your guess is that while they may not be locked like the first metal door, in all likelihood they will lock behind you when you enter. 

You decide to return to your starting location, and just start walking to the right until you find something interesting or circumnavigate the entire inner circle. You leave behind one of your winged sidepieces to mark the spot you're starting from. The hallway is generally quite homogenous at almost every point, so you're going to need this help.

You pass exactly 6 doors by the time you reach something interesting. It's another wooden door. The outer ring has been utterly bare so far, with only metal doors indenting the inner ring. 

If your experience with the mirror room is to be trusted, this wooden door should be safe to open and go through. This isn't an entirely safe assumption, as you don't _really_ know if this place follows any rules, or really what its purpose is at all. You default, however, to treating you like one of your father's training courses, and those always followed rules.

You open the door and look inside. To the right is, once again, a mirror covering the whole wall. In front of you, however, stands a girl in a pink dress, her eyes fixed in a thousand-yard stare.

"Excuse me?" you ask. "Are you alright?"

You're honestly not sure why you asked. Someone standing passively in an empty room in a dungeon like this is unlikely to be alright.

The girl predictably issues no response.

You walk up to her and crouch at her side. You're tempted to try to shake her awake, but your better judgement tells you you should try words again.

"Hey! Can you hear me? Are you awake?"

Having received no response twice you reach for her arm with the intention to shake her back into awareness.

The moment your hand connects with her body, your vision blacks out. Something flashes briefly in the darkness. You immediately withdraw your hand.

"What did you just do!?" you shout in panic.

The girl, again, offers no response.

Before you touch her again, you try to analyze what you just saw. It was merely a brief flash, but you believe you recognized some letters there. Perhaps she was trying to communicate with you through some kind of telepathic chatroom? You decide to touch her again, just to see if that's the case. After all, you ultimately weren't hurt last time.

Your vision blacks out again, and again, the flash appears. It turns out you were correct - it's indeed writing.

 _You have successfully escaped the first room of the Dungeon, and completed the Demo. What further adventures await you in the Dungeon's remaining chambers? Find out in the_ **_full game_ ** _, available now for only $720._

 _Your funds are insufficient to purchase the_ **_full game_ ** _. Would you like to switch to_ **_Episodic Mode_ ** _? Blink once for_ **_no_ ** _, blink twice for_ **_yes_ ** _._

That's... certainly an interesting message. You're not sure how to interpret it. The girl seems to be communicating in some kind of video game-based puzzle language. 

She demands $720, and correctly determines that you don't have this kind of money. You're curious as to how she can tell. You're still carrying the large money bag, and while it does appear quite empty with just a single bill inside, even if you had 8 bills in there, the minimum to meet her demands, it wouldn't look much different.

Still, the problem remains that you don't have $720. You assume that the girl won't speak to you until you pay her. Given she's the only (seemingly) human creature you've met in the dungeon since the squeaky little punk in the armor at the beginning, you're willing to use whatever means necessary to get her to talk.

Holding out hope that turning on Episodic Mode will lower the price, you blink twice.

Nothing happens.

You touch the girl again, and again the same message appears before your eyes.

What could she possibly mean by "blink" if not actual blinking? You suppose the action could be generalized to any motion that involves a quick closing and opening of... something. You try a variety of options. Flapping your arms, closing and opening your fists, squatting quickly (which you're quite proficient at doing, courtesy of all the training you did on your own time while your sisters were out making father proud), opening and shutting the door, and a variety of other things, before it finally dawns on you. It's the _girl_ who's supposed to be blinking. At least, that's the last idea you think you'll be able to come up with.

Since the girl's default state right now is a blank stare forward, making her blink is going to require manually moving her eyelids. This is slightly complicated by the fact touching _any_ part of her body blacks out your vision and replaces it with the demo message, but for the sake of potentially gaining an ally, you try anyway. You awkwardly drag her eyelids down, up and down again. 

The message changes.

 _Episodic Mode is now_ **_on_ ** _._

 **_Episode One_ ** _available now for only $40._

 _Your funds are insufficient to purchase_ **_Episode One_ ** _. Would you like to switch to_ **_single payment mode_ ** _? Blink once for_ **_no_ ** _, blink twice for_ **_yes_ ** _._

You're not feeling like flapping a stranger's eyelids any more. You still don't have enough money to buy even a single episode of the game, whatever that is even supposed to mean.

You're starting to get frustrated with the girl.

"Why won't you just _talk_ to me, you asshole!?" You kick the girl in the shin. 

Her entire body remains stiff, as if she wasn't aware of your presence at all. She begins to fall backwards, making no attempts to stop herself from potentially injuring herself on the hard concrete floor.

You begrudgingly catch her before she falls and hurts herself. You put her back in a vertical position.

Looks like you're gonna have to make some money. A quick examination proves there isn't any in the room itself, and though it contains a metal door much like the one in the last mirror room, this one is locked. This means you'll have to find money elsewhere.

It doesn't feel right to leave the girl behind like this. You briefly consider carrying her, but realize that the message is going to make navigation difficult. You leave her behind for now.

The wooden door behaved the same way as the last one. This is more evidence that the place follows a cohesive rule set, and that one of those rules is that wooden doors can be traversed safely in both directions. You decide to continue your right-bound journey in search of another of these doors.

Unfortunately, after discovering another 6 metal doors in the inner ring, you return to your starting location, having found no new wooden doors. The good news is that this at least proves that the hallway is indeed circular.

You elect to take a break and make a mental map of the area, since you've seemingly visited every location you can safely get to and back from.

It appears that the location consists of a single circular hallway. On two opposite ends lie twin sets of rooms - one with a large mirror and a wooden door leading to the hallway, and one with a bed and a metal door that closes behind you. These sets of rooms lie on the outside ring of the hallway, and there are no other places of interest on the outside ring. The inside ring is indented with 12 equidistant metal doors, which presumably lead to other rooms.

You also choose to work from the assumption that the location is a structured, rule-abiding dungeon - something of a game, if you will. You are unable to determine what the ultimate _goal_ of this dungeon may be, but you have made note of two elements within it: wooden and metal doors. Wooden doors seem safe to walk through at any time, opening and closing as you wish. Metal doors are more dangerous. They seem to close on their own. What rules do metal doors follow? You have two theories at the moment. The first is that metal doors function as points of no return. The first metal door tried to close behind you once you left the first room, with the goal of preventing you from going _back_ inside. On the contrary, the metal doors in the hallway all seem unlocked. This contradicts the fact that the first metal door was initially locked and required a key. This leads to your second theory: That metal doors mark _challenges_ or _puzzles_ that one must overcome. Success in this regard would grant passage through the door. You gained passage through the first door after beating the challenge of the armor entity, even if you were granted success immediately. This theory, of course, is contradicted by the open doors in the hallway.

In the end, the most sensible option seems to be a fusion of the two theories. Metal doors allow one free entry _into_ a challenge room, but exit is restricted until you defeat the challenge. Once the challenge is done, the metal door locks again. If this theory is correct, then the reason why the first metal door you encountered was initially locked would be that it locked after you first entered the room - or rather, after you were carried _into_ the room by whoever trapped you in this dungeon.

You're largely satisfied with your current understanding of the dungeon. There's one thing left to check.

You return to the room you woke up in and carry the chest outside. You briefly attempt to coax the armor to return from within the floor, but its surface appears perfectly smooth. You're not sure how it even opened to swallow the armor in the first place.

Having emptied the room of everything that you can (as in, just the chest) you slip the bed out from between the door and the doorframe. This is somewhat difficult as the door is actively pushing on the bed, trying to close. You suppose it might be valuable to remember for the future that the metal doors close with such force - it wouldn't be wise to try to hold one open with just a limb, for example, but maybe they could be used to break particularly sturdy objects.

Once the bed is fully removed, the door closes and locks with a loud thump. You carry out your test by attempting to unlock the door with the key that opened it earlier.

The door, unfortunately, stays locked. Either the door doesn't unlock from this side, or it can only be unlocked once. More mysteries to test in the future.

In the light of all this thinking and testing, you consider yourself ready to pass through another metal door - into another space you're tentatively calling a challenge room. You open the door directly in front of your starting room, and block it from locking behind you with the bed.

The room is identical in size to the others: a square, six or seven yards in each direction. This one is lavishly decorated, with windows on the walls covered with golden curtains. The other elements of the room are golden as well - from the frames of the windows through the couch and chairs, finishing with the bar at the far end of the room, where another set of mysterious armor stands.

Expecting it to contain another creature, you try talking with it.

"Hey," you said, always preferring short phrases that get to the point quickly.

"Close the door if you wish to challenge me," the armor says in a squeaky voice. It's not the same voice you've heard before. A  _bit_ deeper.

"No way."

"Close the door if you wish to challenge me," the armor repeats. It sounds like someone who can't be bothered to deal with someone else's shit.

"I'm not closing the door so you can trap me in here, jackass. Tell me what's your challenge, now."

The armor takes a moment to respond. Though its visor is dark and empty, you feel as if it were staring disapprovingly into your soul.

"Close the door if you wish to challenge me."

You're tempted to go find a challenge room that doesn't want you to jeopardize your emergency plan. But in all likelihood, this same scene would have played out in any of the other 11 rooms.

You drag the bed fully into the room, but not without visibly groaning and rolling your eyes. You notice that the door doesn't close on its own - you grab the doorknob and shut it. A clicking sound informs you that the door is now locked.

"Okay, it's closed now. What's your challenge?"

The armor doesn't turn to face you, presumably because the creature inside isn't strong enough to move it.

"You have to sell me something."

"Sell you something? As in, for money?"

"Yes."

"Uh, what do you want to buy, then?"

"I don't see what you could have that I could want."

The creature speaks in a condescending tone. Combined with the high pitch, it sounds like a demanding brat. A lot like your much more talented sister Thor F when she was a toddler. Which lasted a week, by the way. You genetically modified abominations grow up quickly.

You figure if you can't use the bed to hold doors open, maybe you can at least use it to get out of this one.

"I have a bed over there. Do you want the bed?" 

"Why would I want a bed? There is a couch in this room, if I should need a place to sleep."

"Sure, but the bed is made of metal. You could melt the frame and use it to make a cocktail shaker or some metal glasses. There's enough metal in that thing to make anything you want."

"That's a good idea, but I don't have a means of melting it. Also, we don't serve drinks here."

"What  _do_ you serve, then?"

"Nothing. This room is only here so you can sell me something."

You didn't bring much else into the room besides the bed. 

"Maybe you want this key?" you offer.

"What does it open?"

"Who knows? It's a mystery. You'll have to find out yourself!"

"I'm not allowed to leave this room. And there's no doors in here that I don't have the key to. Your mystery key is of no use to me."

This is starting to get frustrating. What else do you have to offer the creature?

"I'll sell you this 20 dollar bill for 40 dollars," you say, banking on their ignorance of mathematics.

"Is that a joke or an insult?" 

"Look, moron, you want me to sell you something, but I don't have anything  _to_ _sell_!" You slam your fists on the counter.

"That's not my problem," the creature says, unfazed by your display of rage.

You want to grab the armor by its collar, but it doesn't have one.

What are you supposed to do here? They won't take any of the things you brought in here. Maybe you're supposed to sell them something from  _inside_ the room? You instinctively assumed everything here belonged to them, but maybe that's wrong.

"What about those curtains? They're covered in gold. That must be worth your money, right?"

"I own everything in this room."

You've had it with this challenge. Whoever designed this dungeon must have been a fucking idiot. You're about to give up and try to threaten the creature into giving you the key when you have an epiphany. There's another use for your bulging biceps here.

You walk up to the couch.

"So you say you don't need my bed because you can just sleep on this couch?"

"It would be redundant to have multiple beds, yes."

"Well then..." You raise your fists high into the air. Time to show the shitty armor guy and the world the power of a sixth-generation GMO Nordic god. You smash your arms into the middle of the couch and the wood cracks open. "Let's see how much use you'll get out of this couch when  _I'm_ done with it!" You raise your fists again, and slam them right into that same spot, probably getting a million splinters into your hands.

"What are you doing?! Do you have any idea how long I've been in here?!"

"I! Have! No! Way! Of knowing!" Each exclamation mark marks another strike. The couch is very nearly destroyed.

"I've been here for  _days_! This garbage armor won't let me leave until someone beats the challenge! If I don't even have a bed to sleep on, I don't know if I can handle this anymore!"

With one more slam, the couch splits in half. Your arms are bloody. An amount of splinters worthy of a  _very efficiently used_ pincushion is eating into your skin. Your hair has fallen into disarray, strands falling over your eyes. Your back is turned to the armor and the creature inside.

You turn around, giving it the best enraged look you can muster. This is somewhat difficult since you don't know where in the armor the creature is, or if it can even see you.

"Well, if you need a bed to sleep on, I've  _got_ one."

"H-how much do you want for it?" Looks like your attempt at intimidation was successful.

"Give me a hundred bucks, and it's yours."

"...Deal," the creature says.

Five twenty-dollar bills gently float from the visor to the counter. You make your way there and stash the money away.

"You've s-successfully completed the challenge. Here's your k-key." A small yellow hand is visible for a second, dropping a key through the visor.

You swiftly grab the key, staring into the empty visor, your face shrouded from full view by messy strands of your divine hair. You shamble on to the door and open it. On your way out, you lift the mattress off the bed and throw it at the armor.

"I'm taking the frame with me. You'll have to live with sleeping on the floor."

"Th-that's not what we agreed upon."

"Oh, really? Too bad I don't care, huh?" You leave the room, dragging the bed out, sans mattress.

As the door locks behind you, you hear the armor slip below the floor inside the room.

With your newly gained fortune of 120 dollars, you head back to the opposite side of the room, where the girl in the pink dress awaits. 

On your way, you examine the key you just received. A lime-colored plastic card is attached to it. Usually a card attached to a key would explain its use, but no such instructions were written upon this one. Just a blank, lime plane. Nonetheless, it makes the key seem significant in a way that the first key you found didn't.

You find the girl in the same location as before, staring blankly ahead as usual. 

You take two twenty dollar bills out of your money bag and place your other hand on her shoulder.

_You have successfully escaped the first room of the Dungeon, and completed the Demo. What further adventures await you in the Dungeon's remaining chambers? **Episode One** _available now for only $40.__

_Would you like to purchase **Episode One**? Blink once for  **no** , blink twice for  **yes**. _

You move your hands to her eyes. It's even more awkward to do when you're trying to hold money in your hands, but you make the girl blink twice.

The message disappears, and touching the girl no longer blacks out your vision. The bills vanish in a flurry of particle effects. The girl twitches, and you can hear her start to sharply breathe in, but your interaction is sadly cut short as your vision once again fades to black, this time taking your other senses with it. 

You're trapped in a black void, blind, deprived of a sense of touch, smell or hearing. You might have fallen over for all you know. Is this the state the girl was in until just a few moments ago?

* * *

_Rosemary: Be yourself._

  



End file.
